Turkey academics speak of fear and loss amid mass sackings

Academics and students at a university campus in Ankara laid down their gowns in protest on Friday

Turkey's university lecturers remain defiant, despite what they describe as heavy-handed police tactics during protests against the latest sacking of 330 academics.

In the last seven months following the failed coup attempt, nearly 100,000 civil servants have been removed from their posts. That includes teachers, police officers, soldiers, academics and lawyers.

The government accuses them of being members of terrorist organisations or groups seen as a threat to national security.

Among them is a famous music maestro, a leading neuropsychologist aged 82, a well-known constitutional professor and a lecturer who was imprisoned for signing a petition denouncing Turkey's conflict with Kurdish rebels.

Symbolic protests were held by students, academics and opposition MPs in the capital Ankara and in Istanbul, where sacked professors delivered lectures.

In some cases, academics laid their gowns on the ground protesting against the police blockades preventing them from entering universities. Photographs showed police trampling on their gowns, sparking a big reaction on social media.

The leading neuropsychologist

Eighty-two year old professor Oget Oktem Tanor, who founded the first neuropsychology clinic in Turkey, has been working as a guest lecturer in many universities.

In Turkey's state universities, staff are classed as civil servants. But she says the government's sacking cannot be applied to her because she is not working under a government contract.

Oget Oktem Tanor founded the first neuropsychology clinic in Turkey

"Advisers tell me I might lose my title as a professor," Ms Tanor told the BBC. "This is nonsense. It is an academic title.